The
Writings of John MuirVolume 3 - Chapter VIII.
Exploration of the Stickeen Glaciers

NEXT day I planned an
excursion to the so-called Dirt Glacier, the most interesting to Indians and
steamer men of all the Stickeen glaciers from its mysterious floods. I left
the steamer Gertrude for the glacier delta an hour or two before sunset. The
captain kindly loaned me his canoe and two of his Indian deck hands, who
seemed much puzzled to know what the rare service required of them might
mean, and on leaving bade a merry adieu to their companions. We camped on
the west side of the river opposite the front of the glacier, in a spacious
valley surrounded by snowy mountains. Thirteen small glaciers were in sight
and four waterfalls. It was a fine, serene evening, and the highest peaks
were wearing turbans of flossy, gossamer cloud-stuff. I had my supper before
leaving the steamer, so I had only to .make a camp-fire, spread my blanket,
and lie down. The Indians had their own bedding and lay beside their own
fire.

The Dirt Glacier is noted
among the river men as being subject to violent flood outbursts once or
twice a year, usually in the late summer. The delta of this glacier stream
is three or four miles wide where it fronts the river, and the many rough
channels with which it is guttered and the uprooted trees and huge boulders
that roughen its surface manifest the power of the floods that swept them to
their places; but under ordinary conditions the glacier discharges its
drainage water into the river through only four or five of the
delta-channels.

Our camp was made on the
south or lower side of the delta, below all the draining streams, so that I
would not have to ford any of them on my way to the glacier. The Indians
chose a sand-pit to sleep in; I chose a level spot back of a drift log. I
had but little to say to my companions as they could speak no English, nor I
much Thlinkit or Chinook. In a few minutes after landing they retired to
their pit and were soon asleep and asnore. I lingered by the fire until
after ten o'clock, for the night sky was clear, and the great white
mountains in the starlight seemed nearer than by day and to be looking down
like guardians of the valley, while the waterfalls, and the torrents
escaping from beneath the big glacier, roared in a broad, low monotone,
sounding as if close at hand, though, as it proved next day, the nearest was
three miles away. After wrapping myself in my blankets, I still gazed into
the marvelous sky and made out to sleep only about two hours. Then, without
waking the noisy sleepers, I arose, ate a piece of bread, and set out in my
shirt-sleeves, determined to make the most of the time at my disposal. The
captain was to pick us up about noon at a woodpile about a mile from here;
but if in the mean time the steamer should run aground and he should need
his canoe, a three-whistle signal would be given.

Following a dry channel for
about a mile, I came suddenly upon the main outlet of the glacier, which in
the imperfect light seemed as large as the river, about one hundred and
fifty feet wide, and perhaps three or four feet deep. A little farther up it
was only about fifty feet wide and rushing on with impetuous roaring force
in its rocky channel, sweeping forward sand, gravel, cobblestones, and
boulders, the bump and rumble sounds of the largest of these rolling stones
being readily heard in the midst of the roaring. It was too swift and rough
to ford, and no bridge tree could be found, for the great floods had cleared
everything out of their way. I was therefore compelled to keep on up the
right bank, however difficult the way. Where a strip of bare boulders lined
the margin, the walking was easy, but where the current swept close along
the ragged edge of the forest, progress was difficult and slow on account of
snow-crinkled and interlaced thickets of alder and willow, reinforced with
fallen trees and thorny devil's-club (Echinopanax horridum), making a jungle
all but impenetrable. The mile of this extravagantly difficult growth
through which I struggled, inch by inch, will not soon be forgotten. At
length arriving within a few hundred yards of the glacier, full of panax
barbs, I found that both the glacier and its unfordable stream were pressing
hard against a shelving cliff, dangerously steep, leaving no margin, and
compelling me to scramble along its face before I could get on to the
glacier. But by sunrise all these cliff, jungle, and torrent troubles were
overcome and I gladly found myself free on the magnificent ice-river.

The curving, out-bulging
front of the glacier is about two miles wide, two hundred feet high, and its
surface for a mile or so above the front is strewn with moraine detritus,
giving it a strangely dirty, dusky look, hence its name, the "Dirt Glacier,"
this detritus-laden portion being all that is seen in passing up the river.
A mile or two beyond the moraine-covered part I was surprised to find alpine
plants growing on the ice, fresh and green, some of them in full flower.
These curious glacier gardens, the first I had seen, were evidently planted
by snow avalanches from the high walls. They were well watered, of course,
by the melting surface of the ice and fairly well nourished by humus still
attached to the roots, and in some places formed beds of considerable
thickness. Seedling trees and bushes also were growing among the flowers.
Admiring these novel floating gardens, I struck out for the middle of the
pure white glacier, where the ice seemed smoother, and then held straight on
for about eight miles, where I reluctantly turned back to meet the steamer,
greatly regretting that I had not brought a week's supply of hardtack to
allow me to explore the glacier to its head, and then trust to some passing
canoe to take me down to Buck Station, from which I could explore the Big
Stickeen Glacier.

Altogether, I saw about
fifteen or sixteen miles of the main trunk. The grade is almost regular, and
the walls on either hand are about from two to three thousand feet high,
sculptured like those of Yosemite Valley. I found no difficulty of an
extraordinary kind. Many a crevasse had to be crossed, but most of them were
narrow and easily jumped, while the few wide ones that lay in my way were
crossed on sliver bridges or avoided by passing around them. The structure
of the glacier was strikingly revealed on its melting surface. It is made up
of thin vertical or inclined sheets or slabs set on edge and welded
together. They represent, I think, the successive snowfalls from heavy
storms on the tributaries. One of the tributaries on the right side, about
three miles above the front, has been entirely melted off from the trunk and
has receded two or three miles, forming an independent glacier. Across the
mouth of this abandoned part of its channel the main glacier flows, forming
a dam which gives rise to a lake. On the head of the detached tributary
there are some five or six small residual glaciers, the drainage of which,
with that of the snowy mountain slopes above them, discharges into the lake,
whose outlet is through a channel or channels beneath the damming glacier.
Now these sub-channels are occasionally blocked and the water rises until it
flows alongside of the glacier, but as the dam is a moving one, a grand
outburst is sometimes made, which, draining the large lake, produces a flood
of amazing power, sweeping down immense quantities of moraine material and
raising the river all the way down to its mouth, so that several trips may
occasionally be made by the steamers after the season of low water has laid
them up for the year. The occurrence of these floods is, of course, well
known to the Indians and steamboat men, though they know nothing of their
cause. They simply remark, "The Dirt Glacier has broken out again."

I greatly enjoyed my walk up
this majestic ice-river, charmed by the pale-blue, ineffably fine light in
the crevasses, molins, and wells, and the innumerable azure pools in basins
of azure ice, and the network of surface streams, large and small, gliding,
swirling with wonderful grace of motion in their frictionless channels,
calling forth devout admiration at almost every step and filling the mind
with a sense of Nature's endless beauty and power. Looking ahead from the
middle of the glacier, you see the broad white flood, though apparently
rigid as iron, sweeping in graceful curves between its high, mountain-like
walls, small glaciers hanging in the hollows on either side, and snow in
every form above them, and the great down-plunging granite buttresses and
headlands of the walls marvelous in bold, massive sculpture; forests in side
canons to within fifty feet of the glacier; avalanche pathways overgrown
with alder and willow: innumerable cascades keeping up a solemn harmony of
water sounds blending with those of the glacier moulins and rills; and as
far as the eye can reach, tributary glaciers at short intervals silently
descending from their high, white fountains to swell the grand central
ice-river.

In the angle formed by the
main glacier and the lake that gives rise to the river floods, there is a
massive granite dome sparsely feathered with trees, and just beyond this
yosemitic rock is a mountain, perhaps ten thousand feet high, laden with ice
and snow which seemed pure pearly white in the morning light. Last evening
as seen from camp it was adorned with a cloud streamer, and both the
streamer and the peak were flushed in the alpenglow. A mile or two above
this mountain, on the opposite side of the glacier, there is a rock like the
Yosemite Sentinel; and in general all the wall rocks as far as I saw them
are more or less yosemitic in form and color and streaked with cascades.

But wonderful as this noble
ice-river is in size and depth and in power displayed, far more wonderful
was the vastly greater glacier three or four thousand feet, or perhaps a
mile, in depth, whose size and general history is inscribed on the sides of
the walls and over the tops of the rocks in characters which have not yet
been greatly dimmed by the weather. Comparing its present size with that
when it was in its prime, is like comparing a small rivulet to the same
stream when it is a roaring torrent.

The return trip to the camp
past the shelying cliff and through the weary devil's-club jungle was made
in a few hours. The Indians had gone off picking berries, but were on the
watch for me and hailed me as I approached. The captain had called for me,
and, after waiting three hours, departed for Wrangell without leaving any
food, to make sure, I suppose, of a quick return of his Indians and canoe.
This was no serious matter, however, for the swift current swept us down to
Buck Station, some thirty-five miles distant, by eight o'clock. Here I
remained to study the "Big Stickeen Glacier," but the Indians set out for
Wrangell soon after supper, though I invited them to stay till morning.

The weather that morning,
August 27, was dark and rainy, and I tried to persuade myself that I ought
to rest a day before setting out on new ice work. But just across the river
the "Big Glacier" was staring me in the face, pouring its majestic flood
through a broad mountain gateway and expanding in the spacious river valley
to a width of four or five miles, while dim in the gray distance loomed its
high mountain fountains. So grand an invitation displayed in characters so
telling was of course irresistible, and body-care and weather-care vanished.

Mr. Choquette, the keeper of
the station, ferried me across the river, and I spent the day in getting
general views and planning the work that had been long in mind. I first
traced the broad, complicated terminal moraine to its southern extremity,
climbed up the west side along the lateral moraine three or four miles,
making my way now on the glacier, now on the moraine-covered bank, and now
compelled to climb up through the timber and brush in order to pass some
rocky headland, until I reached a point commanding a good general view of
the lower end of the glacier. Heavy, blotting rain then began to fall, and I
retraced my steps, oftentimes stopping to admire the blue ice-caves into
which glad, rejoicing streams from the mountain-side were hurrying as if
going home, while the glacier seemed to open wide its crystal gateways to
welcome them.

The following morning
blotting rain was still falling, but time and work were too precious to mind
it. Kind Mr. Choquette put me across the river in a canoe, with a lot of
biscuits his Indian wife had baked for me and some dried salmon, a little
sugar and tea, a blanket, and a piece of light sheeting for shelter from
rain during the night, all rolled into one bundle.

"When shall I expect you
back?" inquired Choquette, when I bade him good-bye.

"Oh, any time," I replied. "I
shall see as much as possible of the glacier, and I know not how long it
will hold me."

"Well, but when will I come
to look for you, if anything happens? Where are you going to try to go?
Years ago Russian officers from Sitka went up the glacier from here and none
ever returned. It's a mighty dangerous glacier, all full of damn deep holes
and cracks. You've no idea what ticklish, deceiving traps are scattered over
it."

"Yes, I have," I said. "I
have seen glaciers before, though none so big as this one. Do not look for
me until I make my appearance on the river-bank. Never mind me. I am used to
caring for myself." And so, shouldering my bundle, I trudged off through the
moraine boulders and thickets.

My general plan was to trace
the terminal moraine to its extreme north end, pitch my little tent, leave
the blanket and most of the hardtack, and from this main camp go and come as
hunger required or allowed.

After examining a
cross-section of the broad moraine, roughened by concentric masses, marking
interruptions in the recession of the glacier of perhaps several centuries,
in which the successive moraines were formed and shoved together in closer
or wider order, I traced the moraine to its northeastern extremity and
ascended the glacier for several miles along the left margin, then crossed
it at the grand cataract and down the right side to the river, and along the
moraine to the point of beginning.

On the older portions of this
moraine I discovered several kettles in process of formation and was pleased
to find that they conformed in the most striking way with the theory I had
already been led to make from observations on the old kettles which form so
curious a feature of the drift covering Wisconsin and Minnesota and some of
the larger moraines of the residual glaciers in the California Sierra. I
found a pit eight or ten feet deep with raw shifting sides countersunk
abruptly in the rough moraine material, and at the bottom, on sliding down
by the aid of a lithe spruce tree that was being undermined, I discovered,
after digging down a foot or two, that the bottom was resting on a block of
solid blue ice which had been buried in the moraine perhaps a century or
more, judging by the age of the tree that had grown above it. Probably more
than another century will be required to complete the formation of this
kettle by the slow melting of the buried ice-block. The moraine material of
course was falling in as the ice melted, and the sides maintained an angle
as steep as the material would lie. All sorts of theories have been advanced
for the formation of these kettles, so abundant in the drift over a great
part of the United States, and I was glad to be able to set the question at
rest, at least as far as I was concerned.

The glacier and the mountains
about it are on so grand a scale and so generally inaccessible in the
ordinary sense, it seemed to matter but little what course I pursued.
Everything was full of interest, even the weather, though about as
unfavorable as possible for wide views, and scrambling through the moraine
jungle brush kept one as wet as if all the way was beneath a cascade.

I pushed on, with many a rest
and halt to admire the bold and marvelously sculptured ice-front, looking
all the grander and more striking in the gray mist with all the rest of the
glacier shut out, until I came to a lake about two hundred yards wide and
two miles long with scores of small bergs floating in it, some aground,
close inshore against the moraine, the light playing on their angles and
shimmering in their blue caves in ravishing tones. This proved to be the
largest of the series of narrow lakelets that lie in shallow troughs between
the moraine and the glacier, a miniature Arctic Ocean, its ice-cliffs played
upon by whispering, rippling wavelets and its small berg floes drifting in
its currents or with the wind, or stranded here and there along its rocky
moraine shore.

Hundreds of small rills and
of good-sized streams were falling into the lake from the glacier, singing
in low tones, some of them pouring in sheer falls over blue cliffs from
narrow ice-valleys, some spouting from pipelike channels in the solid front
of the glacier, others gurgling out of arched openings at the base. All
these water-streams were riding on the parent ice-stream, their voices
joined in one grand anthem telling the wonders of their near and far-off
fountains. The lake itself is resting in a basin of ice, and the forested
moraine, though seemingly cut off from the glacier and probably more than a
century old, is in great part resting on buried ice left behind as the
glacier receded, and melting slowly on account of the protection afforded by
the moraine detritus, which keeps shifting and falling on the inner face
long after it is overgrown with lichens, mosses, grasses, bushes, and even
good-sized trees; these changes going on with marvelous deliberation until
in fullness of time the whole moraine settles down upon its bed-rock
foundation.

The outlet of the lake is a
large stream, almost a river in size, one of the main draining streams of
the glacier. I attempted to ford it where it begins to break in rapids in
passing over the moraine, but found it too deep and rough on the bottom. I
then tried to ford at its head, where it is wider and glides smoothly out of
the lake, bracing myself against the current with a pole, but found it too
deep, and when the icy water reached my shoulders I cautiously struggled
back to the moraine. I next followed it down through the rocky jungle to a
place where in breaking across the moraine dam it was only about thirty-five
feet wide. Here I found a spruce tree, which I felled for a bridge; it
reached across, about ten feet of the top holding in the bank brush. But the
force of the torrent, acting on the submerged branches and the slender end
of the trunk, bent it like a bow and made it very unsteady, and after
testing it by going out about a third of the way over, it seemed likely to
be carried away when bent deeper into the current by my weight. Fortunately,
I discovered another larger tree well situated a little farther down, which
I felled, and though a few feet in the middle was submerged, it seemed
perfectly safe.

As it was now getting late, I
started back to the lakeside where I had left my bundle, and in trying to
hold a direct course found the interlaced jungle still more difficult than
it was along the bank of the torrent. For over an hour I had to creep and
struggle close to the rocky ground like a fly in a spider-web without being
able to obtain a single glimpse of any guiding feature of the landscape.
Finding a little willow taller than the surrounding alders, I climbed it,
caught sight of the glacier-front, took a compass bearing, and sunk again
into the dripping, blinding maze of brush, and at length emerged on the
lake-shore seven hours after leaving it, all this time as wet as though I
had been swimming, thus completing a trying day's work. But everything was
deliciously fresh, and I found new and old plant friends, and lessons on
Nature's Alaska moraine landscape gardening that made everything bright and
light.

It was now near dark, and I
made haste to make up my flimsy little tent. The ground was desperately
rocky. I made out, however, to level down a strip large enough to lie on,
and by means of slim alder stems bent over it and tied together soon had a
home. While thus busily engaged I was startled by a thundering roar across
the lake. Running to the top of the moraine, I discovered that the
tremendous noise was only the outcry of a newborn berg about fifty or sixty
feet in diameter, rocking and wallowing in the waves it had raised as if
enjoying its freedom after its long grinding work as part of the glacier.
After this fine last lesson I managed to make a small fire out of wet twigs,
got a cup of tea, stripped off my dripping clothing, wrapped myself in a
blanket and lay brooding on the gains of the day and plans for the morrow,
glad, rich, and almost comfortable.

It was raining hard when I
awoke, but I made up my mind to disregard the weather, put on my dripping
clothing, glad to know it was fresh and clean; ate biscuits and a piece of
dried salmon without attempting to make a tea fire; filled a bag with
hardtack, slung it over my shoulder, and with my indispensable ice-axe
plunged once more into the dripping jungle. I found my bridge holding
bravely in place against the swollen torrent, crossed it and beat my way
around pools and logs and through two hours of tangle back to the moraine on
the north side of the outlet, — a wet, weary battle but not without
enjoyment. The smell of the washed ground and vegetation made every breath a
pleasure, and I found Calypso borealis, the first I had seen on this side of
the continent, one of my darlings, worth any amount of hardship; and I saw
one of my Douglas squirrels on the margin of a grassy pool. The drip of the
rain on the various leaves was pleasant to hear. More especially marked were
the flat, low-toned bumps and plashes of large drops from the trees on the
broad horizontal leaves of Echinopanax horridum, like the drumming of
thunder-shower drops on veratrum and palm leaves, while the mosses were
indescribably beautiful, so fresh, so bright, so cheerily green, and all so
low and calm and silent, however heavy and wild the wind and the rain
blowing and pouring above them. Surely never a particle of dust has touched
leaf or crown of all these blessed mosses; and how bright were the red rims
of the cladonia cups beside them, and the fruit of the dwarf cornel! And the
wet berries, Nature's precious jewelry, how beautiful they were! —
huckleberries with pale bloom and a crystal drop on each; red and yellow
salmon-berries, with clusters of smaller drops; and the glittering,
berry-like raindrops adorning the interlacing arches of bent grasses and
sedges around the edges of the pools, every drop a mirror with all the
landscape in it. A' that and a' that and twice as muckle's a' that in this
glorious Alaska day, recalling, however different, George Herbert's "Sweet
day, so cool, so calm, so bright."

In the gardens and forests of
this wonderful moraine one might spend a whole joyful life.

When I at last reached the
end of the great moraine and the front of the mountain that forms the north
side of the glacier basin, I tried to make my way along its side, but,
finding the climbing tedious and difficult, took to the glacier and fared
well, though a good deal of stepcutting was required on its ragged,
crevassed margin. When night was drawing nigh, I scanned the steep mountain
side in search of an accessible bench, however narrow, where a bed and a
fire might be gathered for a camp. About dark great was my delight to find a
little shelf with a few small mountain hemlocks growing in cleavage joints.
Projecting knobs below it enabled me to build a platform for a fireplace and
a bed, and by industrious creeping from one fissure to another, cutting
bushes and small trees and sliding them down to within reach of my
rock-shelf, I made out to collect wood enough to last the night. In an hour
or two I had a cheery fire, and spent the night in turning from side to
side, steaming and drying after being wet two days and a night. Fortunately
now it did not rain, but it was very cold.

Pushing on next day, I
climbed to the top of the glacier by ice-steps and along its side to the
grand cataract two miles wide where the whole majestic flood of the glacier
pours like a mighty surging river down a steep declivity in its channel.
After gazing a long time on the glorious show, I discovered a place beneath
the edge of the cataract where it flows over a hard, resisting granite rib,
into which I crawled and enjoyed the novel and instructive view of a glacier
pouring over my head, showing not only its grinding, polishing action, but
how it breaks off large angular boulder-masses — a most telling lesson in
earth-sculpture, confirming many I had already learned in the glacier basins
of the High Sierra of California. I then crossed to the south side, noting
the forms of the huge blocks into which the glacier was broken in passing
over the brow of the cataract, and how they were welded.

The weather was now clear,
opening views according to my own heart far into the high, snowy fountains.
I saw what seemed the farthest mountains, perhaps thirty miles from the
front, everywhere winter-bound, but thick forested, however steep, for a
distance of at least fifteen miles from the front, the trees, hemlock and
spruce, clinging to the rock by root-holds among cleavage joints. The
greatest discovery was in methods of denudation displayed beneath the
glacier.

After a few more days of
exhilarating study I returned to the river-bank opposite Choquette's
landing. Promptly at sight of the signal I made, the kind Frenchman came
across for me in his canoe. At his house I enjoyed a rest while writing out
notes; then examined the smaller glacier fronting the one I had been
exploring, until a passing canoe bound for Fort Wrangell took me aboard.

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